Silverlight 1.1: Feels very raw

I've been playing with Silverlight for perhaps 2 weeks now.  Evaluating it for a business application, here are some findings:

Silverlight 1.0

It's just fantastic that Microsoft actually got this out of the door.  Programming with Javascript is simple.  More a Flash app than a business app, but stable and rock solid. 

Silverlight 1.1 (now renamed to 2.0) Alpha

Programming with managed code is awesome.  Lack of standard controls really sticks out at you, everybody is writing their own versions of TextBox, DropDownList, etc etc.  No Cross-Domain web service calls is annoying too.  Writing XAML in Blend is a lot easier than in VS.NET even with the Silverlight tools installed.

Silverlight 2.0 Beta

Apparently this will be released in a few more weeks' time, before MIX 2008.  It's got everything.  More controls, better network stack.  All for under 5mb download.  Go-live licence.

I'm somewhat annoyed they won't allow sockets - I want to write a game :-(.

jliu

Good by fish :-(

I went home last night and Wifey told me we've lost another fish.  This is our second fish that we've lost since we've taken custody of the fish tank of a dear friend.

We never named the fish.  My logic was that if you name the fish you became emotionally attached to him a lot more.  Given that fish have much shorter life-spans than other pets, and are not likely to respond to name commands (unlike say a dog), there was no good reason to name the fish.

Still it was a bit sad to wrap the fish up in a piece of tissue and put him away.  The fish was drying up very quickly once it's out of the water and already I can see decay claiming it.

That was the 2nd of our small fish to go.  Now there's only the larger fish left in the tank.  I'm debating about whether to buy more but currently I'm settling on "no", I think when our friend comes back we'll return this tank, and then go ahead and get ourselves a bigger tank and we'll fill it with more fish.

jliu

Foosball championships

We'll be needing a small web app to track office foosball championships.  Currently it seems Ben and Roman are on the top.

Zhilla is incredibly good too, but she likes to cheat (spin).

My wish for 2008

Is that I'd get a project where I don't need to touch ASP.NET or JavaScript or fiddle (something people use the less polite word f*ck) with AJAX for a whole year!

Of course, one doesn't always get what one wants.

jliu

A (near) perfect project for 2008

A (near) perfect project for 2008 would be:

• Use WPF for front-end (or WPF/E silverlight)
• Use LINQ for business tier (C# 3.5)
• Use SQL Server 2008 for the database

Bonus points

• Use XNA libraries (hmm starting to sound like a game!)
• Pay lots of money (no, can't be a game then)

If you have a project like above, and are after an experienced .NET developer email me NOW!

jliu

Undisciplined Software Development

When I was overseas in Asia I had an opportunity to observe some "undisciplined software development".

I think it is a cultural issue.  The project is driven top-down by money (as it is with western software development), but by the time it gets to the project manager, the project is pretty much "results-driven".  The faster the developers can produce results, the better.

This leads to basically hacks.  Hack this and hack that to create results.  Don't worry too much about bugs - create results first and fix bugs later.

When a new customer wants something that is somewhat similar to your old product for an existing customer, copy and paste the entire source code branch and make your changes in the new folder hierarchy.  It all sounds incredibly to me, but I think I view it as a problem with the project management.  The project team doesn't understand values in terms of zero-defect programming, test-driven programming, maintainability.

I believe they would do well to migrate to an agile-based development, but it must be driven top down from the project management and preached to the developers.  Some of the ideas are so foreign that I'd even imagine resistance from the developers.

jliu

My register lost johnliu.net domain and didn't even tell me

I don't know if I had blogged this before, anyway, I've owned johnliu.net for a couple of years.  In 2006, It expired into redemption period (because I've changed email and didn't follow my old email address, my bad).  But I was able to save it in time.

In 2007, it again expired, but this time I received no email notification from the domain register.

They were not able to re-secure my domain, so now it's parked by some evil domain squatter.

The register gave me john-liu.net for free.  But it sucks when you can't trust your register to remind you that your domain is expiring.  (The same register seem to send me a lot of spam mail promoting their SEO technology).

I think this year, I'm going to go for an external host and have john-liu.net redirected there.  I'll probably keep using spaces for blogging.

Update on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 11:47PM by JohnLiu.NET

Hey didn't you lose your johnliu.net - how did you get it back?

The trick is to not advertise your website.

You see, when I had johnliu.net I tried hosting my own blog, CMS, Wiki...  but the server I used at home was a bit on the crap side and I always suspected that script kiddies are out there hacking my machine at home.

At the end, I just leave that machine off for long stretches of time.  All requests to that server automatically fails.

I still held the domain, but it never lead to anywhere.  
It even fell off google.  (this actually was a bigger lost I feel at the time)

So because no one was really visiting the site, when the squatters got it - they didn't keep it after the intial (I assume 'free' period).  They let it expire, and my register was able to lock it and hold it for me.

In summary, I got lucky.

Now that I'm more serious about the domain again - I better not let it expire like last time.

December 2007

Is gone.  Lina and I went to New Zealand for a visit, with our unborn child (the little guy is probably sleeping through the whole trip). 

I don't know if I expected NZ to change a lot, I feel it changed, but not much.  One Tree Hill is no more, there is no tree now, and the whole place is just the Park Summit.

No more George Pie.

Auckland Grammar School has about 4 or 5 more buildings which is kind of crazy.

My old place is still there, but it's now inhabited by strangers who has planted new and strange plants in the garden.

The road to Cape Reinga is being resurfaced and they've removed the shop (and the post office).  There is a mail box though, but stuck between two Portable-Loos it's just not the same.

We still had heaps of fun.  Thanks NZ.

jliu

Using Windows Live Writer now

After a bit of hiccups with installing windows live (the live version) as opposed to the beta I was using.  I'm glad to report that it is now working properly (as this post should hopefully prove).